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A pioneering case charts how religious groups can harness the power of public accommodations laws to combat denials of service or deplatforming. Religious people and groups face pressure both from private and public actors. From one end, expansive state public accommodations laws can attempt to force religious people and groups to violate their conscience. From the other end, technology companies can deplatform or refuse service to the religious.

It’s no secret that large technology companies are often hostile to religious and conservative groups. Many tech companies, including Amazon and Apple, use broad and vague “community guidelines” that they can arbitrarily apply to terminate service to religious groups. It’s also no secret that the employees of tech companies overwhelmingly favor liberal and progressive political candidates. For the 2024 election, OpenSecrets reported that over 83% of political donations for federal races from Microsoft and its employees went to Democrats. Similarly, 93% of donations from Salesforce employees went to Democrats. At Asana, that number was almost 99%. Some recipients of those donations, like Kamala Harris, showed hostility to basic tenets of religious freedom.

Asana creates and sells subscriptions to project management software. Its software allows users to develop workflows and automated processes, set goals, track work across teams, and manage resources. Asana claims that 73% of Fortune 500 companies use its software. It has over 169,000 paying company subscribers in over 200 countries and territories and over 2.5 million weekly active users. Asana also offers a 50% discount on its subscriptions to nonprofits. But—until recently—it excluded from the discount “[r]eligious organizations that exist to solely propagate a belief in a specific faith.”

Organizations have the right to speak (or not speak) their mind. But when hostility to certain groups becomes discrimination, and when companies deny access to non-expressive goods and services based on religious status, companies can violate state public accommodations laws that protect religion. Particularly relevant for Silicon Valley tech companies, California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act guarantees that “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of” California “no matter what their . . . religion . . . are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.” The Act defines “religion” to include “all aspects of religious belief, observance, and practice,” and the California Supreme Court has held that “business establishments” include online businesses.

When a religious nonprofit, Holy Sexuality, applied for Asana’s discount, Asana denied the request. It informed Holy Sexuality that it wasn’t “eligible for the nonprofit discount” because “organizations that are . . . religious . . . in nature aren’t eligible.” Holy Sexuality is a Christian ministry that offers its services to anyone. It lives out its faith by creating content to educate about biblical teachings. It offers a twelve-lesson video curriculum on human sexuality designed for parents to watch with their teenagers. Holy Sexuality produced its videos for a Christian audience, but anyone can purchase the curriculum on its website.

Yet Asana gave the discount to other similarly situated nonprofits whose views diverged from Holy Sexuality’s. For example, it awarded the discount to San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Asana has a “case study” of this nonprofit on its website, which features a picture of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of males whose dress and actions mock those of Catholic nuns. Similarly, Asana provides The Trevor Project—a nonprofit that advocates for a view of sexuality contrary to the biblical principles Holy Sexuality teaches—with the nonprofit discount. Asana even grants the discount to other explicitly religious nonprofits, including Islamic Relief of Canada.

On behalf of Holy Sexuality, my firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, sued Asana. We filed a single-count complaint alleging that Asana’s denial and policy violated the Unruh Act. By denying a discount to a religious nonprofit for Asana’s product but granting the same to other nonprofits, Asana denied Holy Sexuality “the full and equal” benefit of its product.

Excluding a nonprofit from a discount simply because it is religious violates both human dignity and our country’s foundational principles. Protection for free exercise of religion recognizes each person’s inherent dignity to freely seek the truth according to his reason and free will. Based on that principle, our founders enshrined in the First Amendment the freedom to live out one’s religion free from governmental interference.

Our society similarly recognizes that certain invidious private discrimination against religious belief and practice also infringes on human dignity. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and numerous state laws prohibit religious discrimination in employment and even require reasonable accommodations when job duties may interfere with religion. These laws recognize that employment decisions based on religion interfere with an employee’s human dignity. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and many more expansive state laws—including California’s Unruh Act—prohibit discrimination based on religion in public accommodations. Just like with employment decisions, denying many services based on religion violates human dignity and is arbitrary.

Asana had no legitimate reason to deny its nonprofit discount to Holy Sexuality. Asana gave the discount to similarly situated secular nonprofits with opposing views and even to other religious nonprofits. By excluding certain religious nonprofits, Asana likely deters other religious customers and customers who disagree with Asana’s religious exclusion from using its services. It cuts itself off from a large segment of the market and pigeonholes itself into a market defined by ideology rather than by economic sense. Nor can Asana claim that the provision of its discount compels it to speak any message. Subscriptions to off-the-shelf software don’t communicate any message. So selling this software doesn’t force Asana to communicate anything it disagrees with.

Less than two months after Holy Sexuality filed suit, it favorably settled the case. Asana agreed to provide the nonprofit discount, revise its policy to eliminate the bar on religious organizations, and remove that language from its website. In this case, the Unruh Act protected a religious organization and caused a big tech company to change its policy. The Act functioned as intended—to allow religious groups full and equal treatment in the marketplace. This settlement may cause other private companies to rethink any discriminatory policies they have, and it provides religious groups a tool to use if they suffer from similar discrimination.